Ugh, losing levels is the worst. I remember losing the entirety of the original design for Kridonea Ruins in Atroxian Realm and having to recreate it from memory. I know your pain, though hopefully that backup feature you mentioned could prevent this again since that sounds like an easy mistake to make.

Oh anyway. I'm so eager for keen news. I wish more people make news here...

I agree. Things seem deader here than usual. Would be great to have more forum discussion and especially mods to play, which is why I'm looking forward to this one.

Ouch, sorry about the level loss. You might be interested in Dropbox, which automatically uploads all changed files to their cloud and keeps a version history for the past 30 days on the free tier. Windows has a File History feature that does roughly the same thing onto another disk, but it can be finicky and I haven't managed to get that working reliably.

Place a square of blocks. Save. Add a door. Save. Think, then add eye candy. Save.

With that and Dropbox even at worst I'll lose a day's progress, but I often save the entire mod folder to a zip file, in case I produce some terrible mistake I don't discover until later. (Oh drat, I was already using the keyholder tile property in that other level a month ago?)

Ugh, losing levels is the worst. I remember losing the entirety of the original design for Kridonea Ruins in Atroxian Realm and having to recreate it from memory.

Ouch. The struggle is real. Heh. For some reason it always has to be a large, complex level that gets garged. With The Fastest Gun In The Universe I lost one of the largest levels that had several puzzles and that I had been crafting the entire day, like 14 hours or so. Then, it happened just when I was to quit for that day. I think I wanted to open the level for one last look to behold my handiwork. So I fired up akeen, and instead of loading, saved an empty 20x13 over it by mistake. I ended up staying up about 4 more hours and recreating it from memory as accurately as possible because I was so angry.

Anyway, once again, big thanks for the comments, it's so good to know that even some people care what I'm doing! The past few days (maybe a week already?) I've been working on this level that was partly lost, which I completed yesterday. I'm soon running out of levels to do. I should really focus on all that other stuff now, I hate doing it after the levels are done.

I might just as well update on what's going on... All the levels are nearly done! I want to redo about half of the first level, make one level just a bit easier, and complete another that's missing like 2%. Doing all the levels took much more effort than I expected but it was all worth it. I'm so proud of these levels. I just can't wait to unleash them. I've also done new graphics, mainly tiles. (It's amazing how much work there is in a mod, especially when you think you're getting done soon...) The bad news is that the sprites still aren't done and the reasons are pretty much the same; I just haven't managed to draw that stuff. But obviously I really need to be getting them done. Damn it. And there's still the ending and graphics related to it. I haven't come up with a story so it's a bit difficult to draw anything. Once I have those things sorted, I want to draw some more graphics and decorate the levels more. Since everything always takes more time than I anticipate, I'm setting my internal schedule on a release date towards the end of Octorber. There's no saying it'll happen, but I'll try.

Hooreh for le progress. There really is always so much more work than anticipated in those final details. My latest mod (about 3.5 years into development) is at a similar level of completion. Hopefully we can get them done in time to nudge up the 2017 release tally.

Hooreh for le progress. There really is always so much more work than anticipated in those final details. My latest mod (about 3.5 years into development) is at a similar level of completion. Hopefully we can get them done in time to nudge up the 2017 release tally.

Yeah, it's freaking unbelievable. You just find more and more you need to do, stuff that was hidden in plain sight somehow. One of the reasons I want to do collaborations after this mod: there's just too much stuff for one person to do again and again.

But yeah, let's try to get our mods done this year!

By the way, I made some progress with the sprites yesterday. At the moment I'm working on the ending screen after getting some ideas.

Sorry for dredging up this topic all the time (even if that's pretty much the point of it). I'm lowkey going insane with this mod, entire days go by when I just fiddle with some things and make some small progress but c'mon, entire fucling days when I manage nothing but a few small changes yet I've constantly been doing something but don't even know what. Well, it's all better than days when nothing gets done but still it's sort of alarming that I spend entire days on nothing but this and get three new tiles done. The good news is that sprites are nearing completion, yet there is still work to do. But any progress is good. New tiles. All levels pretty much completed except for the first that needs redoing. I've made several levels just a bit easier; often that is achieved by adding a new tile or raising a roof by one tile so that certain jumps are easier. I can't tell you how difficult that kind of adjusting is for me. It's almost like trying to feel empathy.

I can relate to that too. Don't worry. It's normal. Sometimes I made only a few tiles or map changes per day. We are humans after all, not an AI. Plus we're doing this in our little spare time. If this was our job though, that would be different (I wish that to be my job actually lol). Just keep pushing yourself to the limits. That's the way.

I may repeat myself, but again: people here are making incredible mods when working (almost) without any help. That's great, but takes a lot of time and effort. I may be wrong, but my observation is that generally, only one guy is working on a big mod with the only help of someone else making patches and the music. Sometimes someone contributes a few graphics too, but that's that. But what if, instead of one man doing all the levels and graphics, two more people unite for making additional graphics, and another two unite for working on additional levels? That way, the mods will be done in not time. That's my opinion.

Sorry for dredging up this topic all the time (even if that's pretty much the point of it). I'm lowkey going insane with this mod, entire days go by when I just fiddle with some things and make some small progress but c'mon, entire fucling days when I manage nothing but a few small changes yet I've constantly been doing something but don't even know what. Well, it's all better than days when nothing gets done but still it's sort of alarming that I spend entire days on nothing but this and get three new tiles done. The good news is that sprites are nearing completion, yet there is still work to do. But any progress is good. New tiles. All levels pretty much completed except for the first that needs redoing. I've made several levels just a bit easier; often that is achieved by adding a new tile or raising a roof by one tile so that certain jumps are easier. I can't tell you how difficult that kind of adjusting is for me. It's almost like trying to feel empathy.

Hmm, Keen can get stuck here where the slope meets the wall... best make a new tile for that which will only be used there... okay I can make that more efficient and eliminate one tile from that setup... maybe I can backtrack through the levels I've done and remove that excess tile...